


It's Been A Long, Long Time

by babyblueavenger



Series: Mystery Nerds AU [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Because I can't deny my powerful urge to humanize Filbrick freaking Pines okay, Blood, Ends in ungodly amounts of fluff, Father/Son Moments, Graphic descriptions of injury, Nightmares, PTSD, Permanent Injuries, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:59:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5435654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyblueavenger/pseuds/babyblueavenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filbrick Pines is not made of stone. Even he has things that scare him. Linger with him. Haunt him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Been A Long, Long Time

_He lay perfectly still on the cold, mucky ground as the world descended into hell around him. He couldn’t even shiver anymore as the mud soaked through his fatigues, sucking out every last ounce of heat he had to spare in his body. Which wasn’t much. They’d been camped out here for three hours when the mortars struck. He’d been beginning to think of himself as beyond the pain by that point._

_Dear sweet God, how wrong he was._

_He’d never felt anything like this before. He couldn’t force his brain to find words that described it. The only thing he could think of was that it was leagues worse than that time he’d broken his leg when he fell out of a tree. He’d been about thirteen at the time._

_That was only five years ago, but it seemed like a lifetime away. He saw shadowy memories of Francine frantically calling for their father, of poor Abe, only seven at the time, sobbing his eyes out, unable to form word or any kind of coherent thought. He remembered his father gently scooping him up, like he was made of fine china, and carrying him home. He remembered the crisp sheets of his bed, and how very grateful he’d been to be back between them._

_A shiver rattled through him, and the pain it caused him jolted him back into the here and now. He felt the shrapnel, lodged deeply in his left eye, shift, digging ever deeper. They’d never even seen that damn mortar coming. He happened to look down, and saw dark crimson streaks of blood swirling around in the mud underneath him._

_It was going to puncture his brain. He just knew it. He was gonna die here, in this godforsaken country, and he was never gonna see Francine or Abe or Ma and Pop ever again. That sent a pain through him that, for a minute, made the shrapnel seem like minor irritation. Eighteen years old, and he was ready to start bawling for his ma because it hurt so bad. He would have chastised himself if the feeling wasn’t as overwhelming as an out of control monsoon, raging inside him._

_He wanted to go home, dammit. He wanted his ma._

_His shivering subsided slowly, and he absently thought about how tired he was. A part of him knew he shouldn’t sleep. Sleep meant death. But he just didn’t care anymore. Even as he saw the boots of the medic coming into view beside him, blurry but certainly there, he thought, maybe a little nap couldn’t hurt._

_Just enough to drive out the cold and this awful throbbing headache he had…_  
\-----------------  
Filbrick Pines opened his eyes, stifling the gasp that threatened to erupt from his throat. His surroundings were pitch black, and it took his eyes more than a few moments to adjust. Longer than he felt comfortable with. 

When he could finally make out the vague shapes around him, he realized he was in his bedroom, laying in his bed. Sharon slept soundly beside him, her deep breaths occasionally punctuating by soft, feminine snores. Slowly, so as not to disturb her, he sat up.

It was not December 1944. It was August 1958. 

He was not slowly sinking into a thick patch of mud on the frozen ground of Ardennes. He was in his home in Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. 

There was no shrapnel lodged in his eye, threatening to make his brain bleed until he died. There the puffy scar tissue the shrapnel had left behind, along with a clouded lens and partial blindness. 

Groping around on the nightstand beside him, Filbrick found his sunglasses. He almost always wore them these days, except in the shower and when he slept. He didn’t need people gaping at what that damn mortar had done to him. He didn’t need their gazes on him, reminding him constantly of his weakness, of that horrible winter’s day he almost died. He definitely didn’t need their ignorant questions about how he could possibly see when it was all clouded up like that, didn’t need their indignation about how he could possibly make change or drive a car or do anything like a normal person if he was crippled in such a way. 

He didn’t need it, so he didn’t advertise it. The sunglasses helped with that immensely.

He knew he needed to get back to sleep, tomorrow was Friday, and Fridays were always a pain in the ass in the pawn shop. Buncha customers trying to sell whatever they could to get enough pocket change for the next horse race or their carton of cigarettes or, most frequently, their next drink at Finnegan’s two blocks over. He needed to be on his game for days like those. He wasn’t careful, and he got cheated. No one cheated Filbrick Pines, especially not when he had a full night’s sleep, a hot cup of black coffee, and the general air of being tremendously pissed off most New Jersians shared. 

But the thought of sleeping, of shutting his eyes and risking the war finding him again…it made him want to shiver like a cornered rabbit. And that made him feel a little nauseous at his own cowardice. 

With a silent sigh, he tossed his blankets off and left the room. He kept his sunglasses clutched tightly in his hands.

He padded out to the living room, and sat on the couch. He stared directly into the blank screen of the TV, and waited. 

He always did this on nights when the memories were particularly bad. Most of the time, he could handle it on his own. He laid in bed, thinking about anything else, until he drifted off and didn’t think of the Bulge again. 

But then there were nights like this. Nights when he could practically feel the shrapnel as it moved around, slicing and cutting and making him bleed anew. On nights like this, he sat on the couch and waited it out. If he started getting so tired that he couldn’t remember his own name, let alone what happened during his tour of duty, then he went back to bed. If he couldn’t, there he stayed until daybreak. He was always the first one in the house to wake up anyway. Sharon and the boys never suspected a thing.

This was shaping up to be one of those nights. 

He huffed quietly to himself, hating his own tremendous weakness. The Bulge had been almost fifteen years ago. Sure, he still had the scars, but at least he wasn’t dead. Not like so many of the boys he’d shipped out with, like Jerry from Annapolis and Mort from Philadelphia and Archie from Trenton, so close to home for Filbrick. The ones who hadn’t come home to their mothers, who died scared and longing to be embraced like a child again. 

No, Filbrick was one of the lucky ones. He’d come home, with only a bum eye to show for it. He’d gotten a medal, a Purple Heart, and a handshake from an imposing general, telling him his country thanked him for his service. He should be honored that he’d given so much of himself to defend his country. 

It hadn’t made Filbrick feel honored. It hadn’t even made him feel good. A shiny medal and some fancy words didn’t make the cold winds stop biting at his face, the earth stop shaking, or the never-ending drone of the gunfire or his own pained shrieks stop echoing in his ears. 

The first few months after he’d gotten home were the worst. He couldn’t sleep at all. The doctors had told him the pain in his eye might be pretty bad for the first few weeks, but it was so much more than that. Vivid memories played before him on a loop every time he shut his eyes, an almost perfect recreation of that freezing December day. He’d laid in his bed all night, staring at the ceiling and shaking. Would have cried too if his damned eye hadn’t hurt so much. 

Time eased the pain and the fear in tandem, but neither one ever really went away. Some nights, like this one, were worse than others. He hated nights like this one, hated the weakness it forced on him, heavy and stifling and humiliating, most of all. His own mind turned against him, and there was nothing he could do to escape it. He tried his hardest to fight it, but it wouldn’t leave him be. How the hell was he supposed to keep living like this? He couldn’t. He couldn’t live with the pain and the memories and the fear. He couldn’t live when he sometimes forgot what was real.

“Dad?” 

The tiny, tired voice came from behind him, and he twisted himself (a little more quickly than he’d intended) to look over the couch. 

Stanley stood there, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with one balled up fist, clutching the hem of his blue pajama shirt with the other. Even through the tired haze, Filbrick saw the innocent concern in the eyes of his four-year-old. 

“Hi, pal,” he said quietly. No sense in waking up Stanford and Sherman too. “What are you doing up?”

“I heard stuff. Woke me up,” Stanley said. Poor kid’s words were almost swallowed up entirely by a huge yawn. “Is it time to do work?”

“Nah, pal, it’s too early for that,” Filbrick said. He felt himself shaking a little. He tried to will it away before Stanley saw. “Sun’s not even up yet. Why don’t you go back to sleep?”

“How come you’re out here,” Stanley asked. Filbrick saw the tired eyes clear a little, more of that concern bleeding through. He wondered how a child could have so much of that already stored up in his little body.

“I just…I couldn’t sleep,” Filbrick replied. “It happens to grown ups sometimes.”

“How come?” Those two words littered their twins’ speech incessantly these days. Kids their age wanted to know everything. He was more used to hearing those words from Stanford, who was already proving himself to be a pretty bright kid. Hearing them from Stanley kinda caught him off guard.

“It just does,” he said. It was his catch-all phrase for when he honestly didn’t have an explanation for his sons’ questions. Even if he did have an answer this time, he knew it wasn’t something you shared with a child.

“Dad,” Stanley said, hesitantly, “are you sad?”

The question nearly left Filbrick speechless. “Why do you think I’m sad?”

“You look sad,” Stanley replied, as if it were the simplest thing in the world to understand. The little boy started trotting over to him, his steps clumsy with tiredness, but determined. Filbrick followed him with his gaze.

Stanley rounded to the front of the couch, and Filbrick could see his eyes even more clearly than before. They were alight with compassion, the need to comfort. He wondered how on earth Stanley had cultivated that at such a young age. According to the baby books Sharon read religiously when she was pregnant, these years of a child’s life were all about self-centeredness, because they didn’t know any better to realize other people had feelings like they did. Stanley didn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

Before he could stop him, Stanley started crawling onto the couch and straight into Filbrick’s lap. Filbrick could only make a small sound of surprise as Stanley situated himself until he was comfortable. His face was shoved up under Filbrick’s chin, a tiny, pudgy hand clutched at Filbrick’s undershirt. The feeling of it there was oddly comforting.

“What’s all this for?” Filbrick asked. Thought he tried to play it off with a teasing tone, he was genuinely curious. How much did his intuitive little son realize?

“I’m gonna sit with you till you’re not sad anymore,” Stan said. His words were once again laced with sleep. Filbrick could practically feel small eyelids drooping shut. Stanley’s fine child’s hair tickled under his chin as he subconsciously nuzzled his head close to his father’s warm chest, lulled by the sound of a familiar beating heart. 

Filbrick knew when Stan fell asleep. The grip on his shirt loosened ever so slightly, and the little boy’s breathing evened out and got deeper. 

He generally wasn’t too affectionate with his children. He’d been taught that fathers just weren’t. He didn’t have time to stop and think about it though. He simply raised his arms and wrapped them gently around his son. He held him as close to him as he could without waking him up. 

Stanley was real. He was his anchor to the present, that reminded him that he wasn’t back there. He was here. He was home. He was safe. And he was alive. He breathed in the smell of his child - gentle soap from his bath, the clean smell of his pajamas, that strangely sweet, powdery smell that all children seemed to have. It was his lifeline. 

Soon, the tension started to drip away from his body, like wax from a spent candle. After several more minutes, just holding Stanley close and breathing deeply, it was gone completely. The flame of his nightmares had finally gone out. Relief quickly flooded through him to take its place.

He turned his head slightly, to the clock that perched on the wall, ticking off the seconds softly. It was almost three. He and Stanley both needed to get back to bed.

It almost made him smile that he could even think about sleeping and not worry about remembering again. Even if it was just for tonight, he’d take what he could get. 

He moved his arms to support Stanley from the bottom, then stood up. Stanley’s arms and legs hung limply. He didn’t even stir. Out like a light.

Filbrick walked quietly to the boys’ room, just across the hall from his own. He opened the door, grateful it didn’t even give off a whisper of a creak. Sherman slept in his bed to the right, curled up in a tight, tiny ball of blankets, his head barely poking out from underneath them. Stanford slept on the top bunk on the bunk bed to the left. His arm dangled over the side, and his face was squished against his pillow, awkwardly forcing his mouth open. Filbrick carried Stanley over to the bottom bunk, his designated spot ever since they’d gotten the bunks. Gently, expertly, he nestled Stanley back into bed, pulling the blankets over him. After a moment, he reached down and smoothed the tussles of brown hair down a little. 

Then, as quietly as he entered, he left. 

His own feeling of sleepiness coursed through him. He was only a little surprised to find the thought of sleep inviting for a change.

**Author's Note:**

> I was talking to my girlfriend about Filbrick never taking off his sunglasses, and while I love the thought of Bill possessing him and hiding behind those glasses, I decided to make the reason a little less supernatural. Because I'm an evil, heartless wench who enjoys watching people suffer? Probably.


End file.
